Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1875 — The Modern Explanation of Instinct. [ARTICLE]

The Modern Explanation of Instinct.

How the insect comes by this impulse to do, is one of those seemingly simple questions which, in reality, includes the whole; it is the ever-recurring question regarding each new faculty as it makes its appearance in the series, and demands a few words in reference to the main theories involved. The term instinct is not to be taken, in its popular sense, as referring to all the actions performed by animals in distinction to those performed by man, but must be limited to those automatic actions which are performed without teaching or individual experience. Now this impulse, or instinct, as exemplified in the bee, must, as was formerly supposed, have been directly impressed upon the nervous organization at the creation of the first bee and transmitted by each succeeding generation, or, as contended by Herbert Spencer and others, the race must have become gradually endowed with it, by a constant repetition of those acts which each individual was stimulated to perform by its surroundings at succeeding times. The former method presupposes a special creation and endowment for each species of animals; a supposition generally rejected by scientific men as presenting insurmountable dis. Acuities, and as not having facts within possible reach to sustain it; for no one has ever known of a special creation The other method presupposes development in some of its various phases, which, although not without its difficulties, satisfies so many existing conditions, and is constantly helping to solve so many formerly insoluble problems, that scientific men are led to adopt it, provisionally kt least, as probably true in its main features, and certainly of great importance as an aid in further investigations. According to this theory, instinct is the aggregate or accumulated experience of each race of creatures in which it is found—is impressed by repetition upon the nervous organization, and is inherited alike by each individual of a race, causing their actions to be the same generation after generation unless changed by necessity from changed surroundings. This is the mode of action characterizing the large class of animals whose highest nervous development is the sensorium. It embraces the cephalous mollusks and the whole division of articulates; and its highest development is reached in insects. —Popular Science Monthly.